Barron's MFQ

Where Are All the Sustainable ETFs?

ETFs represent just a sliver of sustainable investing. That will soon change.

Sustainable investing has quietly gone from a fringe obsession to a movement that has captured the interest of a wide swath of investors. So it might come as a surprise that sustainable investing is still nascent in the otherwise booming world of exchange-traded funds.

Out of more than 1,700 ETFs, just 35 check the sustainable box, according to Morningstar, and 10 of those made their debut this year. While ETFs as a whole are steadily winning market share from mutual funds, assets in sustainable ETFs—a mere $4 billion as...